Governor Aminu Bello Masari of Katsina State on Monday presented a budget proposal of N200,741,960,745.00 for 2019 to the state House of Assembly.
The governor, while presenting the budget before the Assembly during Monday’s plenary, said the 2019 budget proposal is lower than that of 2018 by N12,894,812,633.00.
Speaking on the budget, which he tagged “Budget of Stabilisation”, the governor said environment has taken the lion share with N24 billion, followed by health and road getting N20 billion each, while water resource will take N12 billion.
According to him, “The 2019 Budget is designed to stabilise restoration plans, programmes and policies of the present administration. The total budget for the 2019 fiscal year is the sum of N200,741,960, 745.00 billion with 73.7% capital expenditure and 26.3% recurrent expenditure.
“The 2018 Budget is structured with a total recurrent expenditure of N52,741,287,930.00, which is equivalent to 26.3% of the total budget and capital expenditure of N148,000,672,815.00 which is 73.7% of the total budget.”
Governor Masari further disclosed that: “The total amount projected to finance the 2019 Budget is the sum of N139,376,773, 735.00, which comprises of N9,720,368,000.00 as Internally Generated Revenues, N28,556,405,735.00 as other Internal Revenue and N101,100,000,000.00 as revenue receivable through the Federation Account.”
He, however, stated that the 2019 recurrent revenue has decreased by 17.7 per cent over that of 2018 budget, adding that the recurrent expenditure in the 2019 budget has increased by one per cent.
Masari informed the lawmakers that the state government was yet to finalise negotiation with the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) through the Federal Ministry of Finance in respect of a soft Lloan and grant to finance a four-year project under the Health Sector Reform Plan of the state government.
“To that effect, a provision of N9.3 billion is reflected in the 2019 budget estimates pending the actual formalisation of the agreement,” he said.
Receiving the budget proposal, the Speaker of the Assembly, Abubakar Yahaya Kusada, said the House would commence the scrutiny of the budget by inviting the commissioners of respective ministries for defence.
The speaker urged the state government not to depend on the federal government’s allocations to the state but work towards revamping the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR).
